


In Quiet Spaces

by camichats



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mute Tony Stark, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 18:00:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16023086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camichats/pseuds/camichats
Summary: “Will you just shut up for a minute and let me think?” Bucky shouted angrily.Tony snorted automatically, body taking care of what his mind was too taken aback to do. "Right cause you always come up with the plans," he quipped by rote, but after that shut his mouth, and that must have been enough.





	In Quiet Spaces

“Will you just shut up for a minute and let me think?” Bucky shouted angrily.

Tony snorted automatically, body taking care of what his mind was too taken aback to do. "Right cause you always come up with the plans," he quipped by rote, but after that shut his mouth, and that must have been enough.

Bucky did come up with a plan, and it worked perfectly. A couple hours later, when Steve was safely in the hospital and the team was told that he would make a full recovery, Bucky had calmed down. He sat next to Tony in the hard plastic chairs and ran a hand through his hair, looking both uncomfortable and exhausted. "Hey. I'm- uh," he stopped, cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about earlier. Yelling at you." He rubbed his hands together, feeling the drag of metal against his skin. It had been a nasty fight, both in terms of brutality and physical dirt; he'd have to clean out his arm tomorrow since he was too tired to do it tonight. "I was worried about Steve and..." he blew out a breath. "I dunno. I just know that it didn't warrant me yellin' at you, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again."

"It's okay," Tony said, and that should have been the end of it.

Only instead of brushing it off like he led Bucky to believe he had, he dwelled on it. Scratched at it like a wound that would heal if only he left it alone, but he didn't. He thought about how much he talked-- how much he had _always_ talked. He hadn't thought about it before, but he'd started with the inane chatter to give people a reason to dislike him instead of them doing it for no reason-- or what amounted to no reason (like him being younger and smarter than them; he hadn't even done anything to _anyone_ back then, and yet they'd hated him). So he gave them a reason.

He talked. He talked and talked, and he learned to be condescending. He ingrained it into who he was, and even now that he was learning it was a problem, he didn't see how he could stop.

He hadn't meant to be completely silent. He _really_ hadn't. But every time he found himself opening his mouth to say something annoying or completely unnecessary, he shut it again, and the conversations always carried on happily without his interruption.

He still talked occasionally, to Bucky about how his day was and the like, but after a while... well. He noticed that anytime he talked people looked like they were bracing themselves.

So he stopped doing that too.

It didn't take very long. A couple days to stop muttering to himself about inane details and telling Jarvis to do things that he already knew how to do, and he was free. Altogether, it took less than a week.

And no one noticed.

* * *

Bucky knew something was off, but he didn't talk to Tony about it, so Tony figured that he didn't mind. There was also the possibility that he was going to wait it out until Tony came to him about it, but that wasn't going to happen.

Tony was afraid that with the silence it wouldn't take very long for Bucky to notice that, without the flash and pizzazz, he wasn't special.

It wouldn't take very long at all.

* * *

Except... well maybe Bucky didn't like him as much as he'd originally thought because Tony had been completely silent for going on three days, and Bucky wasn't asking him about it.

He told Tony about his day and asked if Tony got the work done that he'd planned on. Tony nodded, and Bucky smiled. "That's good," he said, and that was the end of it. He didn't ask Tony to elaborate and went to put the dirty dishes in the washer.

Tony's chest twinged at the apparent disinterest that his boyfriend had in his life, but he swallowed the feeling down and told himself that the pain had just been from the arc reactor.

But then Bucky was kissing him like he always had, touching him reverently and bringing him to bed to the point that Tony thought he'd been imagining things. Bucky undressed him like he was a present and pressed him flat on his back before going down to suck his cock.

Unbidden, Tony remembered Bucky joking once, with a crooked grin, that blow jobs were for good behavior. Tony bit his lip and kept quiet, afraid with every grunt or moan that slipped past that Bucky would stop, wipe off his mouth, and leave without a backward glance.

He came, and yeah technically it felt good, but there was a hole in his chest-- and this one wasn't helping to keep him alive.

Bucky crawled back up his body and kissed along his collarbone. His dick was hanging heavy between his legs, brushing against Tony's hip though he didn't make a move to do anything about it for the moment. "Why're you so quiet darlin'? Thought you'd like it." He looked at Tony from under his lashes, shooting him a coy smile, though the worry was clear in his eyes.

Tony tried to answer him, but the words got caught in his throat and he didn't try very hard to dislodge them. Instead, he gave Bucky a confused little smile and glanced down at his softening prick, still spit-slick from Bucky's mouth.

Bucky dropped the act, shifting to fully concerned, and Tony squirmed internally-- he wasn't about to give Bucky such an obvious tell. "Come on Tony. What's wrong? I said I was sorry about yellin' at you, and you said it was fine. Were you lying?" he asked, and he was surprisingly nonjudgmental about it, but Tony just wanted to ask if they were really going to have a serious conversation while naked and one of them was still hard. "Tony... please. I can't fix this unless you tell me. What did I do?"

Tony- he- he didn't really _mean_ to run away, but his throat was working and he couldn't get anything out, and Bucky wasn't going to let this go until he got an answer-- an answer that Tony was currently incapable of giving. He pushed at Bucky's chest until he climbed off of him and sat to the side expectantly.

Going by his wide eyes and parted mouth, he wasn't expecting for Tony to get off the bed, grab his jeans off the floor, and leave.

"Wait, Ton--"

Tony shut the door firmly behind him. He stepped to the side and pulled his pants on, then headed to the elevator. He wouldn't be able to get any work done, but DUM-E never judged him. Never asked questions that couldn't be answered by nodding or pointing. Jarvis was a whole other story, but he never pushed Tony when he knew it would make the situation worse. The same couldn't be said for literally any other being. In the rest of humanity's defense, Jarvis had had a little bit of trial and error at the beginning.

Bucky pushed sometimes, and other times he waited for Tony to bring it up. He always gave it his best guess, and he had a pretty good success rate. Tony was pretty sure that Bucky walking in the workshop, haphazardly dressed and hair a mess, counted as a miss.

Tony set his jaw and met Bucky's look defiantly, but he faltered when he saw that Bucky wasn't angry, just worried. He spread his hands helplessly. "If you're tryin' to tell me something, Tony, I don't know what it is. Are you mad at me?"

Tony looked away and shook his head.

"Okay," Bucky said slowly, padding forward. "Are you breaking up with me?"

Tony jolted, looking at Bucky in surprise. When he saw that Bucky was serious, he shook his head again, more vigorously this time.

"Okay," Bucky repeated, licking his lips and leaning against the table. "Did something happen? Somethin' magical to make it where you can't talk anymore?"

Tony swallowed, and he gave his head a quick shake. No, nothing had happened. Maybe he should have lied and said that that's what happened though; it would have been easier.

"Are you... choosin' not to talk?"

A pause, then Tony nodded.

" _Why_?" Bucky couldn't help but ask. He closed his eyes and shook the desperation out. If Tony was choosing not to talk, then Bucky couldn't make him start just by asking why he was doing that. "I mean, is this somethin' you want to be doing?"

A much longer pause, and Tony shook his head.

"Okay," Bucky said softly, coming to kneel on the floor next to where Tony was sitting. "Can you- do you talk to Jarvis?"

Tears started to prickle at his eyes, and he tightened his hands into fists. He was weak. An off-handed comment from someone in a stressful situation a couple weeks ago, and he couldn't force anything past his throat even to tell his AI that he was okay-- he couldn't tell his boyfriend that he was okay.

When Bucky put a warm hand on his bare back and pulled him into a hug, he started to think that maybe the reason he was incapable of telling them that was because it wasn't true.

* * *

Tony worked on it. He went to therapy, worked through his issues, and came home. One day, he told his therapist the sentence that triggered it, and they told him to tell Bucky. He thought about telling them to fuck all the way off, then to come back and fuck off again. He didn't.

He went home and told Bucky that he'd read too much into that little sentence, and that was a rough couple of days for them. Bucky was more careful with how he talked to Tony, afraid that if he said the wrong thing that Tony would break again.

His therapist gave him meds, and he hated it. It felt like a dependency, and it took a while before he was comfortable with the addition to his morning routine.

He told Bucky that he needed him to start acting normal again, because while he appreciated the thought, it just made him feel like he was about to break at a moment's notice again.

It was difficult and it fucking sucked, but eventually they reached something like normal and Tony felt like he could breathe again.

* * *

Tony was honest-to-god defusing a _bomb_ in the basement of this musty ass building, and he was mumbling nonsensically to himself. It went through the comms of course, so the entire team was an audience to him bitching out the wire that got caught under his fingernail and cut the sensitive skin. It was barely bleeding, but that was hardly the point because it hurt like a bitch.

"I swear to Odin when I'm done defusing this bastard I'm going to take its guts and set them on fire."

"Hey babe?" Bucky said, grunting as someone jumped on his back. "Little less talk little more bomb squad?"

"Don't be rude, I'm great at multitasking. If you're nice to me, maybe I'll do some multitasking you like when we get back home."

"For the love of god, don't," Steve said under his breath, probably thinking back to that time he'd caught Tony and Bucky defiling the kitchen.

Tony grinned as he finally got the bomb to power down. "No promises Cap. We all know how much he likes my mouth."


End file.
